State efforts to improve students’ reading and language arts achievement: Does the left hand know what the right is doing?

Abstract

This study examined officials’ efforts to improve third grade students’ reading and language arts performances with newly developed curriculum guides and assessment. We focused on (a) why officials developed their guidelines and assessment, (b) how they informed principals, curriculum directors, and teachers of their reform goals, and (c) practitioners’ understanding of how they should change their instruction to prepare students for the assessment. State officials (n = 4), third‐grade teachers (n = 21) from seven schools, their principals (n = 7), and building‐level curriculum directors (n = 7) were interviewed. Interviews indicated that officials assumed that the assessment would change teachers’ instruction, thereby improving students’ performances. Prinicipals, curriculum directors, and teachers did not understand how they should prepare students for the assessment because officials failed to inform them of their new expectations. Those practitioners who attended the state's training workshops discounted their utility because they focused on the assessment's design and scoring procedures with little attention given to the specific types of instructional changes that teachers needed to make to prepare their students. Moreover, none of the practitioners received the newly revised curriculum guidelines prior to the first administration of the new assessment. State officials dismissed practitioners’ negative reactions and discounted their requests for more assistance: officials did not think that teachers would change their practices until after the first testing. Our discussion focuses on the sincerity of the state's efforts to inform practitioners and questions the likelihood of their reform's success.